


All the Pretty Boys

by Unchained_Daisychain



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt, Eventual Romance, General Debauchery, Hamburg Era, Internalized Homophobia, Jealous Paul, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow Build, Smut and Angst, no idea how long this one will be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:07:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21701938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unchained_Daisychain/pseuds/Unchained_Daisychain
Summary: Some parts of Hamburg are far from pretty, but trust John Lennon to find beauty hidden amongst the debauchery of the city. Every night there’s a new boy and every new boy is one feature closer to resembling Paul, who simply doesn’t know how to cope with the fact that he isn’t one of them.-Something inescapable lurks on the streets of the Reeperbahn—something as copious and heavy in the air as the booze and music. Enticing and filthy and unlike anything they’ve ever witnessed.A sex shock, Paul likes to call it.
Relationships: John Lennon & Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Original Character(s), John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 53
Kudos: 162





	1. As Deceitful As Hope Is

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for leaving votes on the poll I made! this fic took the win, but the modern uni au was a close second. hope you'll enjoy what I've got planned for this one (first chapter wasn't supposed to be this long oops..)
> 
> title inspiration: "All the Pretty Girls" by Kaleo
> 
> chapter title inspiration: an excerpt in the intro of Sylvia Plath's _The Collected Poems_
> 
> all research comes from _Paul McCartney: The Life_ by Philip Norman
> 
> finally, I wanna extend a massive shoutout to [Rioviolina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rioviolina) for basically beta-ing this chapter and being such a wonderful help with most things I write in general. I encourage you all to check out her stuff if you haven't and send her all the love and support she deserves!

Paul thinks he’s forgetting something, and it eats him alive not knowing what it may be. He’s checked his bag twice over, but the imaginary lightbulb hovering above his head remains unlit. At that point, he reasons it must not have been important enough to remember. Then again, Hamburg is too distant, and their stay too long, to leave pieces of himself behind.

He’s leaving behind enough already—a disappointed father and finger-wagging teachers, who all think a career in music is just a pipe dream and that this stint in Germany will only open his eyes to that fact after it inevitably proves to be a fruitless waste of time. But with the combined efforts of persuasion from himself, manager Allan Williams, and even _Mike_ of all people _,_ Jim signed his son away regardless. (“Fifteen quid a week, though, Da’! That’s more than me teachers make!” he had argued, tactfully omitting that £15 a week was also more than Jim himself earns.) The pen glided across the paper with the gut-wrenching dissonance of disappointment and fatherly concern as he scrawled his signature at the bottom of the mandatory consent forms. Paul wasn’t sure whose soul was being sold.

Now he sits on his bed, waiting for John…warring with the excitement and the uncertainty.

Swallowing a deep breath, he scrubs his hands over his face and swims his fingers through his hair.

His comb…. 

He’s forgotten his comb.

Jumping from the bed, all shaky and giddy, he grabs it from the loo. It finds its place atop a white shirt in his suitcase. His eyes scan the contents surrounding it, everything as orderly as the last ten times he checked it. A meticulously packed home away from home. 

As he worries at his bottom lip and stares unseeing at his folded clothes, footsteps thunder up the stairs along with a loud string of unintelligible German. A sudden aura of calm embracing him with all the comfort of a thermal coat, Paul smiles and zips up his bag.

With a finger stiff and arrow-straight across his upper lip in parody of Hitler, John goose-steps into the room, legs and voice eating up the space in long strides and booming shouts. The quiff of his greased DA droops limply against his forehead while his eyes scintillate between gaps of dust-laden sunlight with a zeal Paul understands all too well. So antithetical to the monster he’s portraying that Paul’s stomach welters with affection for him.

“You do that in front of the Germans and they’ll turn the firing squad on you,” he laughs, eyes borrowing the shine as he watches his maniac best mate come to a proper military halt. 

John’s posture slackens back to that uncouth slouch, and he smacks out a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. “They ain’t got the nerve to fuck with the English again, son!” he says assuredly, jabbing the unlit fag at him like a wan but authoritative finger.

“Alright, Winny Churchill,” Paul says, rolling his eyes fondly. “Where’s yer kit?”

“Mimi’s packin’ it,” John mumbles, slumped over against the sill of the open window now, cigarette bobbing between his lips as he tilts his head to watch the flame catch it. 

Forever distracted by John smoking, Paul’s words die on his tongue for a moment. It’s a hypnotic sight, how the fire bends to the amber of his eyes, sets them alight. As though even the elements are at his mercy during this insane stroke of luck in which they’ve found themselves.

He shakes his head. “Yer awful. Treat ‘er like a slave, you do.”

“Aye well, she’ll be rid of me for a few months now. She’s doin’ it more for herself than me anyway, sayin’ goodbye to it an’ all that.”

“To your clothes instead of _you?”_ Paul laughs.

He shrugs. “It’s those she’ll miss more than anything. ‘M takin’ all ‘er hobbies away, goin’ off like this. Washing, ironing, folding. Rinsin’ and repeatin’.”

Smiling, Paul grabs his guitar from against the wall and lays it across his bed with the rest of his luggage. “I’m sure she’ll be dead gutted.”

“What about you, then?” John asks, words tangled in a tendril of smoke. “Jim’s still gorra cob on about his precious Paulie ditchin’ that drab fuckin’ teacher college for rock ‘n’ roll?”

He sighs, rubs his neck. “A bit, yeah. I’m really banking on this gig, y’know. Can’t have a repeat of Scotland, John, that was a fuckin’ bust.”

If another colossal failure like that tour happens again, playing to funereal silence in half-empty ballrooms and stacking themselves like a sandwich for warmth in freezing vans, Paul can effectively kiss a career in music goodbye. He won’t be able to stomach his _own_ despondency, let alone that of his father’s (and arguably worse, that one).

“Don’t even worry your pretty ‘ead about that,” John tells him with more of that unshakable confidence; Paul wishes it were a virus he could contract. “This is Hamburg, Macca, not the bum-fuck Highlands.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And anyway if Derry and his lot can come back not soundin’ like a bloody bunch of tone-deaf apes, then we’ll sure as shit be proper musicians after this.” 

Paul quirks his mouth, reminding both John _and_ himself, “Got no other choice but to make it.”

“And make it we will.” His friend stares back out the window, as if to ensure the entirety of Allerton, “This is our big break, I feel it in me _bones.”_

Maybe it’s the wonder in John’s voice or the way the breeze leaking into the room seems to strengthen at his words, carry them further in and scatter chills down Paul’s arms with them. But one by one, his reservations abate and leave nothing but sheer exhilaration in their wake.

Feeling like he needs to move his legs lest they buckle from the rush, Paul joins him at the window.

“Spare us a ciggie?”

John proffers the half-smoked one from his mouth.

He scrunches his nose. “Come off it, I don’t want your germ-infested one.”

“Better get used to it, son,” he says, shoving it closer to Paul’s lips even as he turns his face away. “Gonna be livin’ in each others back pockets for about four months. Might be sharin’ a lot more than fags, you know.”

“Not too keen to start early, though.”

“Suit yerself, princess.” With a shrug, John nestles it back between his thin lips and roots for another one. “Just be sure to give it back when you’re done.”

Paul feels John watching him as he lights the fag for him, unsure if it’s the match or John’s eyes which cause his plump cheeks to heat. But he keeps his attention on the smoke that slowly trickles from the tip of it, grateful for the distraction.

Waving the stick out and chucking it from the window, John continues dreamily: “Christ, we’ll finally be on our own. More dosh than our pockets can hold. No bullshit rules. Complete and utter freedom, baby.” He wraps an arm around Paul’s shoulder, hauls him in until their sides press snuggly, and whispers, “We can do anything we want.”

“Anything,” Paul repeats, smiling at him and feeling every inch like that sixteen-year-old kid who slagged off from school at every wild whim of his best mate. Going nowhere in hopes of someday going everywhere. The promise of liberation enticed him to his very core.

 _We’re finally_ going _somewhere,_ his mind enthuses.

“And _anyone,”_ John adds with a smirk, grip seeming to tighten on the ball of Paul’s shoulder. 

Unless he’s imagining… _hoping._

But one feeling he knows not to be debatable is the twist of his stomach at the dark tone curling around one single word— _anyone_ —and the longer John looks at him, the more his smirk fades into something sober, almost longing. Between them something thickens, like an inward manifestation of the outward ashen curtain of smoke. Something Paul has felt, has nearly reached out to touch, it was so palpable, over the years in these similar circumstances. Just the two of them and a host of words unspoken. 

But then blinking, John clears his throat. Slices the moment right down the middle with a single crisp sound. He moves his arm from Paul’s shoulder, leaving a chill, and leans both elbows on the window sill as though physically boxing himself in. Paul doesn’t know how to carve his way back into him.

“Yeah, I’m sure Hamburg’s got it’s fair share of pretty things crawlin’ round,” he murmurs, seemingly to himself. His lips pucker into a perfect circle to puff out smoke rings that lasso Paul’s thoughts and squeeze until they pop. “And I sure am addicted to the prettier things.”

(In life? In lust…?)

Paul breathes a faint laugh, tongue feeling out of place in his mouth. Whole body suddenly feeling out of place in his own bedroom. John is talking like every word is meant for the pages of a private journal and not the ears of another person. 

Snapping himself from whatever rumination he had slipped into, he thumps his cigarette butt from the window and, with his normal gruffness back in place, asks, “You all packed up now?”

Paul nods, perfunctory. “Er, yep. Yeah, I’m good.”

“Best be goin’ then.” He pushes away from the window and stands by the door, eyes curiously on his scuffed boots while Paul gathers his things. “Gonna pop by mine one last time ‘fore we start roundin’ up the others.”

It takes a while for him to entirely shake the electric charge from whatever passed between them. And it feels like he’s pulling pins from his skin one by one. Desperately he wants to know why John looked at him as though he were seeing him for the first time. Or maybe the last.

But he doesn’t ask and they don’t talk about it.

Because suddenly they’re in Hamburg.

* * *

Their first set is every minute the flop Paul had feared it would be. His Rosetti is a fiery red corona onstage, but unfortunately little more than that. Played upside down and strung up backwards to accommodate for his left-handed needs, solar flares don’t exactly arch white-hot and hissing from the strings like the color may suggest they would. And the crowd is by no means deaf to his subpar instrument nor the band’s drowsy tunes. The club is dearth of energy and people alike, and what scant audience remains shouts for Conchita, the usual form of sleazy entertainment with her tasseled nipples and enticing stripteases.

They’re already destined for failure even trying to compete with her in a room full of drunken men.

Some patrons give the lavender-suited quintet onstage one look and make a one-eighty right back into the street. Others, the more merciful, offer their ears for a few numbers before deciding this change in set-up isn’t their taste and similarly leave. All the while, from the back of the club with his trusty wooden chair leg by his side like a slave-driver’s whip, club owner Bruno Koschmider relentlessly exhorts they, “Mach schau!” 

“Aye, and why don’t you get up here and make a bloody show!” George eventually yells back at him, but Koschmider’s greasy face merely tautens with laughter and distorts the intimidation inherent there, oblivious to the disrespect; or otherwise simply unperturbed by it. 

“You can’t replace a stripper with a buncha blokes dressed like matching fairies,” Pete complains from behind his drums. “And anyway the fuckin’ Nazis already think we’re named after little boys’ pricks or somethin’.” 

To their abject horror and mortification, they quickly learned Beatles is very similar to the German word _peedles._ Now they have to put on an even more impressive performance to compensate for the loss of respect. Fortunately Paul is no stranger to fighting for his respect in this group.

“And it’s written across yer kit, ye pervert, so how ‘bout we just turn you around, then?” John bites back, smiling at Paul when he catches him snickering. 

“Was yours and Stu’s fuckin’ name!”

Stuart glances to John with a smirk, probably something more behind the thick lenses of his shades, and Paul’s nerves prickle with annoyance. He and John could have come up with the clever name just as easily.

After approximately the tenth outcry of _Mach Schau,_ John takes matters into his own hands with a perhaps ill-timed but admittedly humorous parody of Gene Vincent. Hunching over and dragging one dead leg around the stage like a lame Quasimodo. Voice dipping up and down exaggeratedly between octaves during “Lotta Lovin’” like his larynx is a rollercoaster. A sheen of sweat accentuates his bobbing Adam’s apple, Paul’s eyes distracted by the way it glistens in the hazy yellow lights and fingers tripping over chords because of it. Then John lobs some quip about, “That shite playing’s for the bassist, Macca,” and, grinning, Paul straightens up because that unabating desire to please John creeps up his spine and spills into his chord-seeking fingertips. 

All in all, the lunacy pays off.

The crowd eats it up and Paul knows only John Lennon could have done that.

A cacophony of banging beer steins and drunken laughter quickly permeates the club as though blasted in from a high-power hydrant. Fueled by the positive encouragement, they kick it up a notch—heathens clinging to the harmony. All it takes are a few upbeat and raucous numbers before curious ears wander in from the street to grab a drink and a seat.

It isn’t a packed house, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the one they had.

When they leave the club in the late hours of the next morning, the daylight—a disorientating and ragged glow infused with dying music amongst the sex-crazed pungency—pours scattered light upon the street’s clubs and dirty cinemas that only ever know the dark. Paul wonders if the Reeperbahn ever sees sunlight or if it opened the curtain of clouds as a special Hamburg greeting for them. 

With the 4-count rhythm of a bass drum still thumping in his head, Paul and the others return to the squalor which awaits them at the back of the Bambi Kino. Two stuffy storage rooms shared between the five of them, blankets no thicker than sheets of paper, a gentlemen’s toilets the closest they have to washing facilities. It’s a scene that would have his poor mother sobbing and his father paying for a trip back home if they caught sight of it.

As for Paul, he can’t decide if it’s a step-up from a frigid tour van rumbling across Scotland or not, but it feels like yet another stepping stone on the right path. The path of luxurious hotel suites and instruments shinier than the pence in their pockets. One day he’ll look back on these grotesque quarters with fondness and appreciation. 

(One day they’ll make it.)

As though to tie an official satin ribbon around Paul’s thoughts, John reminds all of them they’re headed for the toppermost of the poppermost while he stands atop his bunk that caves beneath his weight. And it’s the best goodnight (or good morning) Paul has ever heard.

That first day he falls asleep with a smile on his face and the steady rise and fall of John’s nearby breathing in his ear. The rollercoaster finally coming to a smooth halt.

* * *

Something inescapable lurks on the streets of the Reeperbahn—something as copious and heavy in the air as the booze and music. Enticing and filthy and unlike anything they’ve ever witnessed. 

A sex shock, Paul likes to call it.

They all get their first whiff of it during a window of downtime between sleeping and performing, when they use the opportunity to further explore the red-light area. Even this early in the evening, the light still reaching like a malformed hand into the shadowed alleyways, sex flows blood-red and rich through the veins of this pulsating heart of the city. The streets introduce to them a myriad cast of characters: from pimps to transvestites and every possible role in between. With overt stares they watch this group of English lads—leather-jacketed and limp-lipped with incredulity but trying not to show it—smelling their alienness like feral bloodhounds. Some intimidating fräulein even offers boyish, virgin George a pull right then, but flushed and timid he politely declines. 

Forever a hedonist, however, John enjoys the debauchery the most out of them all. 

At an adult cinema, he crowds up against the smudged glass for a peek inside, pulls a spastic face when he’s shooed away. Rounding street corners, he cat-calls and paws at skirts, his efforts successful only half of the time. He throws his head back and cackles and jostles his mates’ arms as if to wonder, _Are you bloody seein’ this?!_

It’s as though he’s right at home. Has found his natural habitat. Either the city is making room for John or John is rearranging it himself to nestle into the Lennon-shaped piece of its puzzle. Paul half-fears he’ll never want to return to the drab and rainy scene of Liverpool after discovering what else is out here for him in the world. Worries they’ll need a tranquilizer and butterfly net just to haul him back home. The initial enthrallment dwindles with every new stop, and morphs into something darker, _hungrier,_ and from a distance Paul observes it like the birth of a beast under a full-bellied moon. 

“‘Ave a gander at that one,” the band leader snickers, like a naughty schoolboy chatting between lectures. Forgoing discretion because it’s seldom exercised in slums like these anyway, he has a finger aimed at some high-heeled androgynous creature across the street. The face is caked in makeup and the hair is long like a bird’s, but the inexperienced strut gives them away. Too much concentration poured into every clumsy step in the heels; hips too narrow to offer a daintier sashay.

Paul watches with curious fascination, a spectator at a zoo knowing the cats aren’t quite cats. But more accurately, some hybrid of its own, perhaps. The person undoubtedly feels a quintuple of eyes on them and shoots an affronted look their way before shamelessly adjusting whatever situation they have in that snug strapless and clacking further down the street.

A frown corrugating his brow, Pete asks, “What was that?”

“A bird-bloke,” John offers, almost distractedly, eyes still fixed on the lingering outline of the person. “A blirk.”

“The best thing yer ugly mug’s gonna get for a pull round here,” Stuart cuts in, earning a shove that catches Paul in the crossfires. They’re all in their individual huddle under the electric neon signs of sex shops, as though afraid to separate in this unfamiliar jungle of prostitution and sodomy. 

Shaking his head, George says, “You can get away with anything out ‘ere, eh?”

“These girls make the ones back home seem like proper prudes,” Paul says, scouring his options. Yeah, the spread of girls here would probably give him anything he could translate. Maybe even more than he bargained for. An itchy little present to take home in his trousers.

John snorts. “That’s ‘cos they are. You’ll get more twat one night here than you will twenty in Liverpool.”

“As long as you got quid on you,” Stuart points out.

With a tight-lipped smile, John pats the bassist’s cheek twice, condescending. “Some of us don’t need it, Stuey.” 

Smirk tucked in the corner of his mouth, Paul teases, “Yeah, didn’t ye see how charmed those dear fräuleins were at John’s loutish ways.”

“Oi!” he protests with a laugh, hooking Paul into a headlock that has him elbowing John’s side to escape it; or else, to pretend he’s _trying_ to escape it. Letting him loose but keeping an arm around his shoulders, heavy through the leather, John continues, “Least I was tryin’! You’ll give ‘em all the wrong impression with that pretty face of yours if you don’t show some effort, son.”

Brushing off the subtle jab, Paul retorts, “Sorry I don’t pop a stiffy at the sight of anything even _resembling_ a hole,” leaning, subconscious or not, closer into his side.

John waggles his eyebrows and squeezes the ball of his shoulder, looking directly at him in a way that convinces Paul they’re the only two on the pavement. “But that postbox was givin’ me the eye, la’, you saw it.”

He laughs and shakes his head and relishes the weight of John’s arm around him until both it and his attention leave him cold and aching a couple steps later. 

Occasionally the tables turn and they fall victim to shouts Paul can only assume are crude and cutting because his scattered knowledge of German only recognizes certain phrases. One word in particular— _“Schönling”—_ appears regularly in audacious speech, their eyes on Paul and their faces bathed in something akin to allure or repulsion. He can never pin the exact expressions, as they shift sporadically and ambiguously from person to person. 

But he lets it go. How can he even take offense or hold his own in an argument when he doesn’t understand what they’re accusing him of?

For another half hour they carry on. Paul dodging an amalgam of compliments and criticisms in this sexual warzone. John heading for the frontlines of it all, the rifle in his trousers at the ready like he wants a shot at any and everyone they pass on the street. A proper randy marksman.

Paul isn’t sure what it is, what John is on the hunt for, but he doesn’t have time to worry about it.

* * *

Over the next week their audience steadily grows thicker. They blast the amps to draw in more curious ears from Grosse Freiheit and maintain the onstage antics to placate those already inside. Some nights it isn’t much, maybe one lone table of two only half-listening, but they still make the most of it. 

And anyway Paul is having the time of his life.

(The city is a wasteland—promising forbidden fruit with a serpentine hiss—but offers more freedom than he knows what to do with. Dropping it at his feet like spare change that he can never decide how or where to spend.)

Under the smoke-shrouded stage lights he forgets about the scruffy cinema rooms they call home and the melancholy innate on the streets just outside the club. In here he feels sheltered. Protected by Koschmider and his skull-bashing wooden chair leg. For hours his fingers slide unflagging on the fretboard and the only sorrows he knows are the ones buried in the lyrics of the occasional slow ballad.

In front of the microphone he and John sing an interchange of words of love and words of rebellion straight into each other’s mouths. Paul savors the bitter-sweetness, tastes it on his tongue and fancies it reminiscent of John. He remembers the morning of their departure, how electricity spiderwebbed across his chest as though he touched a stripped wire when John turned unreadable eyes on him. At least now he knows something is happening with cause. He can stamp a moniker to it and transmute it into a thing of integrity that hums through the amps as noisy rock ‘n’ roll. 

And of course the crowd relishes it.

They bob their heads during George’s “The Sheik of Araby”, twist their hips in time to Paul’s “Long Tall Sally”, and contort with laughter at John’s cavorting in the middle of “Cry For A Shadow”. When they see the boys losing steam, they merely pass up beer bottles for sustenance. A few tables on the outskirts of the stage display their ovations the most rowdily. Intermittently a lone bloke will stagger out of the uproar and approach John to shout something in his ear. Another request, maybe, or more intimate adulations. Whatever it is, it always has John’s lips curling like a feline’s.

To the great displeasure of the audience, the band eventually has to rest.

Limbs still heavy from the music solidifying like marrow, they all bound from the stage for the only thirty-minute break Bruno allots them for the entire five-hour set. It always goes by too quickly. Their breaks and their nights and the red-eyed havoc of the city all go by too quickly. A swirling maelstrom that steals Paul’s breath while he buoys in the middle and submits, out-of-body and choking in a way he doesn’t entirely despise yet. 

Clapping John on the shoulder, he motions toward the counter where a busty bartender pushes out orders swifter than he’s ever seen. Myopically, he follows the tilt of Paul’s head and jokes, “You get too pissed, McCartney, and we’ll be proppin’ ye up in the corner with Stu’s shades on.”

He shakes his head with a smile. “Nah, it’s Georgie boy we best be worried about. More bevvies than the bloke’s ever got his hands on.”

“Right you are, lad.” A strong hand ruffling Paul’s sweaty and drooping DA, then, “Gorra hit the bog, but save us a pint, yeah?”

Nodding unthinkingly, he watches him go. Two hands slicking back the sides of his greased-up hair, leather jacket wrinkling and smoothing across his back like an unsteady tide at the effort. In complete and utter control of the room even without a microphone beneath his mouth and a fretboard beneath his fingers.

Paul blinks away the daze, then goes to the bar.

As soon as he claims the seat beside George, his friend yawns, wide and jaw-popping. Finding the reaction poorly timed but not entirely insulting, Paul resists its contagion and smiles.

“Alright, Hazza?”

He faces him with the weight of forced maturation imposing upon his youthful features. His childhood friend hasn’t even yet grown into the size of his guitar nor the pitch of his voice, and all at once seventeen seems too young for this late-night scene. Some nights Paul still fears Hamburg will chew George up and spit him out just to watch him squirm. Other nights he isn’t so sure how his own eighteen-year-old self fares against it all.

“Dead knackered,” George says, smiling in a way that only slightly mitigates the worry. “Gonna need a bit more than booze to keep this up every night.”

“Just need a proper kip, is all. Maybe we can talk Bruno into a longer break.”

“Psh, doubt it. I’m convinced _mach schau_ will be his dying words.”

For a few minutes they chat idly over pints, George’s sentences punctuated with the frequent yawn. It’s one of the closest slices of home Paul has experienced thus far. Reminiscent of a time when just him and long-time pal George thought themselves a couple of adults for splitting a nicked pint even when their feet still dangled above a pub floor.

At some point, however, when Paul’s gaze ambles leisurely across the club he notices John hovering amongst a small group of people at the left-hand foot of the stage. All night they’ve been a rambunctious table, shouting song requests in broken English and stamping their feet in delight when they’re answered and sending drinks to the foot of the stage like gratuities. Paul heard more than saw them, every face an incorporeal silhouette beneath the assaulting stage lights.

John has one calloused hand folded over the shoulder of some bloke, blond and largely indistinct because of it, who grins at him as though starstruck. His own fingers splay along the center of John’s back, as spindly and curved as his smile. 

Background chatter and furor fades into white noise as he observes the pair. It’s indescribable, perhaps even gratuitous, the wraith of uneasiness that nettles his gut. But Paul knows that look. Witnessed its birth and juvenescence on the streets of the Reeperbahn, which offered John every raunchy, self-indulgent fantasy he could dream up. Thirsty and flesh-drunk, re-visioning bodies as mere scraps of meat.

Paul forcefully refocuses his attention back to the drink in his hand, loosens his grip when he notices it white-knuckled. Beneath the counter his leg bounces furiously, shaking away concerns like dirt trapped in the creases of his trousers. With futility he tries to tune back into George’s words, but every time his eyes wander like the slow pan of a film camera, all responsiveness travels with them.

Over the lip of his fingerprint-smudged pint, John and the stranger slip off to the loo, gliding across the glass like ice skaters. The German bloke a few paces behind John’s austere strides, his jawline soft and lips pouty. 

Paul straightens on the barstool, spares a glance to the foam-topped amber beer in the extra glass next to him. 

For John.

They’re a leaky tap to begin with, his thoughts. His ears strain for George’s words, just so he doesn’t feel like a prick for leaving his friend unheard (always unheard). When prompted, he nods; when cued, he chuckles, synthetic and chaste. But his mind fusses over John, as seems to be his commonplace these days. And he’s wondering why he needs company for a piss, someone to give a hand aiming and shooting, when he relives the easy curl of an arm around slim shoulders, the gentle rictus of a baby-faced stranger—and in a rush the tap rattles, hisses, and bursts free, saturating his mind.

“‘M gonna find John. Break’s up in a few,” Paul suddenly blurts, knowing he’s cut George off but not caring.

“He’s a big boy, Paul,” his younger friend tries, “‘m sure he’s fine.” 

But Paul’s feet have already mapped their course. Like rancid food, curiosity has never settled well in his stomach. It jerks him to his feet and demands attention until successfully digested. 

Inch by uncertain inch, he pushes open the door to the loo and a shudder of relief teems over him at the emptiness which greets him. Exhaling a quiet sigh, he fully enters and heads for the sinks. Fingers circumflex on the rim, he stares with eyes darker than the porcelain yet paler than the grime lining it just above the bottomless plughole.

Paul chides himself for even thinking John came in here with some stranger. Downright _refuses_ to voice for what reason he had feared they’d sneak off together. Of course he wasn’t going to find anything—he wasn’t _looking_ for anything. As it turns out, naught to be found. It was daft to even follow at John’s coattails. For all he knows they could have passed each other in the close-knit throng of bodies with John too blind and Paul too preoccupied to notice. 

At least it’s a cogent enough argument until Paul hears it…a moan. Muffled but echoey across the barren stalls. 

Then, a broken _shh!_

His blood runs cold.

Of their own accord—their own toxic curiosity—his eyes crawl across the chipped mirror in front of him and freeze, stock-still in his skull, at the stall farthest from the door. 

And shit.

He would recognize those white trousers anywhere.

The same pair he thought John filled so well on stage, thighs bulging against the seams. The same pair he once borrowed after a night kipping over—a few hours spent in John’s skin and the closest he’d ever come to it. The same pair now bunched around his ankles and staining black at the cuffs from the filthy tiled floor.

In this reversed, through-the-looking-glass manner is how he observes it all. Whispers of ivory skin taunting him from the crack in the stall’s door. Two pairs of trouser-bound feet, white and black; angels and demons entangled by feather and horn in brutal lust. The sinewy muscle of an exposed calf shifting ever slightly with a rhythm that has Paul’s stomach churning with disgust and rage.

_(It’s only John’s trousers, though. It’s not really John. Just a big misunderstanding._

_It’s not really John….)_

Foolishly he convinces himself he’s merely staring into a fun house mirror and that when he turns around the trickery will be nothing but a distorted reflection. But the rational part of him knows all he’ll really see is the truth, normal-sized and irrefutable; the pleasured, insistently quiet bites of sound only remind him of that.

When his best mate and bandleader collapses to the toilet seat with a grunt, assumably pulling the stranger down with him, Paul suddenly decides he’s seen enough and hauls himself from the room.

Just outside the door, his body nearly jackknifes from every blow of realization. Sights and sounds that bruised his brain; indelible visions he can’t shake. It all has him tight-chested and pleading for the ground to fissure beneath his feet and swallow him into an abyss. 

He already feels as though he’s trapped in one anyway, a sudden darkness enshrouding him. 

Because John isn’t queer.

John hosts wanking sessions only to howl with laughter when some unfortunate sod inadvertently comes at the shout of Winston Churchill. John lobs slurs of “poof” and “nancy” and “pansy” so frequently they begin to lose their sting. John boasts of every sexual exploit he’s ever had and imparts with a smirk which birds give the best head on their side of the Mersey.

To see him channeling his charm and libido into bedding another lad positively disorientates Paul.

And with an overbearing helplessness, he realizes there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t confide in George that he caught their mate buggering another bloke and risk sullying John’s reputation. He can’t confront John about it either, then risking accusations of snooping or, worse, removal from the band. 

Really, all he can do is rally an artificial indifference, hitch up the downturned corners of his mouth into a paper-thin line at best, and return to the bar.

But even as his bum meets the tattered leather upholstery, the scene still refuses to leave his mind—something viscid and stubborn he’s stepped in that coats the soles of his feet…the soles of his thoughts. Around the handle of his beer stein, his hand flutters in indecision. Unsure whether he wants to guzzle down more or vomit what already coats his liver and stomach.

Before he can come to a decision, George’s familiar drawl bifurcates the train of thought: “Didn’t find ‘im?”

Paul blinks dumbly, claps empty eyes on him. “What?”

“John. He wasn’t in there?”

“Oh. Er, no…no. Didn’t see ‘im.”

“D’ye see a ghost, then?” George asks, the thick copse of his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “You don’t look so good, mate.”

(So much for forced indifference.)

Clearing his throat and buttressing his tone with a greater nonchalance, Paul lies, “Um, yeah, just…lights too bright in the bog. Made me realized how bladdered I am.”

George shakes his head. “Christ, we all gotta pull it together, eh? Never gonna get booked in the Kaiserkeller like this. Assumin’ we even last a month _here.”_

Paul summons a chuckle that passes deadly through his lips. It’s all he offers.

For the next handful of minutes, George drivels on in his ear while Paul’s imagination casts a vignette of the finale that is probably occurring in the stalls at that very moment. Right underneath all of their noses.

Maybe John has reached the pinnacle of his pleasure and pounds viciously into the stranger straddling his lap. Maybe he’s a more gentle lover—tender hands and velvet kisses—a tease who wants to milk this opportunity for all it’s worth because he never knows when another will arise again. Maybe the pair have been compromised and now lay in a pool of chipped teeth and crimson blood. Or maybe this isn’t even John’s first time—maybe he’s been shagging blokes for years now and knows all the stratagems of how to circumvent the dangers of it.

_Maybe, maybe, maybe._

But then suddenly Paul has his answer.

John slides onto the stool next to him with the grin of a man who just got his rocks off with another bloke and thinks he got away with it.

Fitting that satiated grin around the lip of his pint, he takes a long swig then scrunches his nose. “S’gone warm,” he complains. “What kinda sorry sod lets his mate’s bevvy go to waste, eh?”

 _Probably the same one who ditches ‘em for an illicit quickie,_ Paul thinks cynically, as his body tips like a tree bending to a breeze from the playful nudge of John’s shoulder.

“Where’d you bugger off to?” George asks, a leather-padded forearm leaned onto the countertop to aim his question at John. “Paul said he didn’t find you in the loo.”

Fucking hell.

A spindle of anxiety pierces Paul’s gut as he fixes his gaze to a ring of condensation on the countertop. (It doesn’t look like enough to drown in.)

“S’that right?” he asks, and in his periphery Paul notices John eyeing him warily, perhaps fearfully. Nonetheless, he smoothly lies, “Well, fucked off outside for a smoke. Not that it’s any concern of yours, Harrison.” 

The last bit comes with a sharpness that nearly snips the downy hairs of Paul’s face as it bypasses him.

“See if anybody comes lookin’ for yer sorry arse next time, then,” George murmurs, frowning.

“As a matter of fact, I’d be dead chuffed if they didn’t,” and this time he isn’t spared from a few pricks of his own. “Macca, a quick word?”

For the first time since he sat down, Paul finally looks at him. Notices the disarrayed sheaves of his auburn hair and a wraith of sex-drunk iridescence in his irises and—bloody hell, those goddamn specks of _dirt_ blackening the cuffs of his trousers like the grime on the porcelain, the corruption of St. Pauli already feasting upon him from the Achilles tendons upward.

Christ, Paul feels sick to his stomach all over again.

“Right now?” he asks, silently pleading for more time to process everything. “Gotta start playin’ again soon.”

 _“Paul.”_ An impatient outburst that no one but the person named would hear the desperation in. Then, calmer, “Please.”

Swallowing a lump that grates his throat like sand, Paul rises onto numb legs. Unthinkingly they carry him behind John and into the brisk night air. The nearby signs offer a circumambient glow of vibrant reds and purples; they feel like harlequin eyes spying on them in the shadows. _(What have the naughty British boys done now?)_ Against the unforgiving brick wall of the Indra he and John stand, cigarettes sliding from their pockets like swords being drawn in tacit agreement of a duel.

Paul isn’t ready for a fight. Will _never_ be ready for this fight.

“Well go on, then,” John murmurs, rough-voiced and disrupting the flame of his match with his breath.

Paul keeps his own fag unlit, no taste for it. “What?”

“Call me a filthy queer, quit the band, tell all the other lads.” He waves an impatient hand that extinguishes the match. “What’re you waitin’ for?”

Slowly he shakes his head. “I…I wasn’t gonna do any of that.”

“And why not?” John demands, eyes narrowed. “Don’t think yer doin’ _me_ any favors by pretending to be okay with this. If you wanna drop out, you can bloody well do it now.”

“Why do you _want_ me to do that? Say and do those things?

“I _don’t,”_ he answers with an incredulous laugh. “I’d rather like if you kept yer bloody gob shut about it—”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Paul says, calm as a soft rainfall.

John blinks at him. “Eh?”

“That’s what you want, that’s what I’ll do.”

 _Because I always do anything you ask._ _Lennon says jump and McCartney flies._

Paul bites the inside of his lip until it hurts.

John sighs, rubs the fingers holding his fag across his eyes. 

(Will he write the whole thing off as a sleep-deprived delirium? Paul wonders.)

“This was the first,” his mate offers quietly, unbidden. “I’ve never—” but then he swallows and it takes the remainder of his confession down with it.

“When…when you said we could do anything we want here, I didn’t think you meant….” 

And Paul doesn’t know _what_ to call it; even if he did, he isn’t sure he’d want to breathe power into its name like that. 

John’s cheeks hollow on a long pull while the tobacco-stuffed tip of his cigarette glows orange. Paul watches, even now still captivated. His own cigarette more of a sixth digit than anything, still stiff and unlit between his fingers. 

“Yeah, well. Neither did I.” John shrugs, plucks residue from his tongue with dirty fingers. “Just sorta happened, really.”

“Were…were you bein’ paid for it?” Paul asks hesitantly, but regrets it as soon as John snorts with derision.

“No. ‘M not some fuckin’ bent prozzy.”

His tone and gaze have gone harsh as the bricks at their backs again. And shit, the last thing Paul wanted was to create some chasmic divide between them. Can’t John understand this is new territory for the both of them and Paul is trying his fucking best to tread it carefully?

“That’s not what I—” 

“Oi, lovebirds!” comes a shout from the entrance of the Indra, earning the snap of two identically quiffed heads (though one more mussed than the other). Paul grits his teeth not only at the interruption but the mediocre bassist causing it. “Koschmider’s gonna bloody clobber us all if you don’t get yer arses onstage right now!”

“Tell ‘im he can kiss my English arse!” John calls back.

“Real nice, that. And any sentiments from you, McCartney?”

Turning his ire onto Sutcliffe now, John shouts, “Fuckin’ hell, just do one, will ye?!” and for the first time since they stepped out here, he and Paul finally agree on something.

If Stuart says more before the doors slam, Paul doesn’t catch it. His eyes gauge John’s expression, tight and frustrated, as he waits him out. A phalanx of questions still occupy his mind, but their ranks are too tight to isolate one at a time. So he says nothing at all.

“C’mon,” John murmurs, flicking his cigarette butt to the ground—the bang of a gavel. “Don’t need the Nazis on me arse tonight.”

(Then for the second time Paul fears what could have happened if someone else found the two tonight. Would that version of John even have the pulse or breath to explain himself? He hates to ponder it.)

Paul nods, chaste, and makes for the door.

A hand grabs his bicep, firmly. With questioning eyes he looks back at John. Doesn’t like the insecurity—the _not-John_ that stares back.

“Listen, it was a one-time thing, alright?” His fingers slide down the sleeve of Paul’s arm, an inverse of the spider hand that typically leaves chills on his skin. Quietly he repeats, “It was a one-time thing,” leaving Paul to wonder exactly which of them he’s hoping to convince.

* * *

(With automatized motions Paul finished their set, and it wasn’t necessarily a rubbish performance, but it did lack some of the flavor they’ve accumulated over the past several nights. His eyes seldom left the piano keys, but on the off chance they did, John never once met them. As if _Paul_ were the guilty one, the closeted queer. Only when the inevitable _mach schau_ sailed from the bowels of the club did John come alive—putting on a damn good show full of spastic faces and dog barks and offensive gestures. All out of spite, of course.)

* * *

That night the sound of John’s distant breathing in his ears brings Paul no comfort. He only remembers it rapid, stuttered, and reverberating off cold white brick walls. 

But somehow he finds sleep. Not without snapshots of the night smeared across his closed eyelids like smut on white trousers.


	2. Burn On, Burn On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the positive reception and comments on the first chapter. I'm very grateful and wish I could update the fic faster than I have been.
> 
> chapter title taken from Sylvia Plath's poem "Firesong"

Their sleeping schedules are already erratic and subpar, with bedtime occuring for them just before noon and the garish red neons operating as the sun of their day. So, when Paul is roused by something gently but incessantly nudging his mouth, his first instinct is to recoil in irritation. Frowning, he peels open his eyes and the sight of a white crinkled wrapper fights through the bleariness of his vision, rendering him cross-eyed from how near it is. For a disorientated moment he rears back his head until John’s playful smirk finally comes into view. 

“Wha’s this?” Paul croaks, the abrasion of last night’s closing Little Richard numbers finally catching up to him. 

“Brekky,” his friend answers simply, handing it over. “Enjoy.” 

When he straightens from his crouch at the bedside, Paul dumbly blinks at his retreating back. “Why—” he starts, but cuts himself off, already inferring the answer.

“Huh?” John asks distractedly, now stooped over his bag.

Paul clears his throat. “Where’d you get it?”

“Some diner near the club. Had to play a bloody game of charades just to order it.”

“You woke up early just for this?”

John spares him a glance over his shoulder. “Don’t expect it again any time soon.”

“Well…ta,” is all he can muster, pathetically.

Staring down at the sandwich, he can practically see the apologies in every crease and crinkle of the wrapping. John has always been generous with food but stingy with apologies. Holding this silent plea of forgiveness in his hands—preparing to taste it on his tongue—only solidifies in Paul’s mind the happenings of last night. He hoped to cling to his denial and realize everything was a fever dream, but he doesn’t see himself sweating this out anytime soon.

“Where’s mine, then?” demands George’s sleep-scratched voice. His greasy, unstyled hair stands to attention in his own bunk as he eyes Paul’s food with ravenous envy. 

“They ran out.”

Paul relents a smile at the dry snub and spots one tilting the corner of John’s own lips when they catch eyes. Gratefully, he tears into the wrapping, treated to dinner  _ and _ a show with more of his mates’ banter and George’s pillow-shaped retaliation. The sandwich is nothing special, but it’s the best meal Paul has had since they’ve arrived here.

Between the boisterous rousing of teenage boys and quips that John proffers more liberally than sandwiches, things almost feel normal again. Still, an indescribable hesitance prevents Paul from leaning as fully into the comfort it brings as he typically would. 

Once he finishes eating, he slinks off to the loo to clean himself up while distant dialogue tells him that a film still has the cinema’s patrons occupied. At the sinks he splashes his face with water and stares at the rivulets racing down his cheeks. Mind still somnolent, every centimeter of ground covered by the drops or every shift in his expression is registered a second too late. 

He sighs and cuts the race short with a brusque swipe of his t-shirt.

In light of last night he can’t help but question every interaction—every minute touch shared between John and himself. A guiding hand that lingered on the small of a back in the bedlam of a club; two bodies bent in a too-small bed like the parentheses that bracketed the unspoken agreement for appropriately kept distance. When an arm still snuck around a waist in lethargic haze, they unwound with a jocular, “You looked different when I brought you home,” softening any blow to their egos.

They laughed. They never crossed boundaries.

During their three-year long friendship, surely John would have made a pass at Paul if he were queer, or even plagued by the curiosity. They’re good-looking blokes and best mates standing on a solid foundation of trust. And opportunities have presented themselves in many drunken nights.

And even more recently, and dangerously sober, the moment they shared at Paul’s bedroom window. As though he had missed a step racing down the stairs, Paul thought for sure something was about to happen. The arm that curled like a honeyed promise around shoulder and statement alike— _ anyone _ —and the gaze that stretched on until either it or him was sure to snap. 

The sound of the door opening startles Paul into recommencing his routine. 

He squirts a minty streak of toothpaste onto his toothbrush after nearly bringing it clean-bristled to his teeth in his distraction. At first he doesn’t spare a glance to the most recent occupant of the room. The steady stream of urine on porcelain prompts a quick look and an ensemble of onyx black leather, just as glossy in the harsh lights, paired with a styled truss of auburn hair stands before the urinals at the far wall. 

Paul turns away just as John zips up and flushes with an elbow. At the adjacent sink his friend joins him to wash his hands. Rinsed clean, he flicks the droplets of water at Paul’s face, which scrunches up boyishly. 

“Oi,” he objects, and sticks his hand beneath the running water for his own ammunition.

“Truce, truce,” John declares, preening his DA with delicate pats in the mirror. Scrutinizing himself through squinted eyes, he tugs on the lapels of his jacket—apathy snapped back into place with the leather. Looking back at Paul, he asks, “Speaking of…are we okay?”

He rinses his mouth clean. “What's that?”

“You an’ me—are we alright?”

“‘Course,” he answers, a forced smile pinched onto his lips.

“Good.” John nods, but continues eyeing him.

Paul holds his breath for a new confession. His friend’s little gesture was already leagues above what either of them are used to after a row. He desperately wants to move past this—apology consumed and digested. An even stronger foundation can be built on their buried secrets.

“Yer face wants shavin’,” John finally says, with lithe fingers reaching out to trace the stubbled line of Paul’s jaw. As though having grazed a razor blade, he jerks them away, hissing.

Paul rolls his eyes, scrubs his hand over the scruff at the angle of his jaw. “Doesn’t suit me…make me look more rugged?”

“Not with that face.” 

Before Paul can query what type of face that is, the door opens. A cluster of middle-aged men throng into the room…the moment lost. John taps the porcelain—a meager goodbye compared to the parting words he offers the strangers filing in the room, caustic though they may be. 

_ We’re alright. _

Returning his gaze to the mirror, Paul lifts the razor to his cheek.

* * *

Change doesn’t happen overnight, but concealment happens in an instant.

With chameleonic proficiency John reorients himself in their atmosphere, leery of another slip-up. Things go back to normal, or at least as normal as Paul can make them seem with this new lens smudging the way he views his mate. To everyone else, he’s his typical bird-chasing and insult-hurling self. To Paul, he’s a bird-chaser and insult-hurler with a filthy secret.

As though compensating for that one night, John throws himself at the girls in the club like a dog in heat. Cigarette breaks are exchanged for quick snogs or knee-tremblers in the side alleys.  _ Maybe it  _ was _ just a one-time thing, _ Paul begins to think to himself, with a sliver of self-loathing for mulling over John’s sexual exploits rather than having a pull of his own.

It doesn’t take long for that to take priority.

During the last few bars of John’s “Ain’t That A Shame?”, he appraises the crowd as though squinting through a rifle scope for his next trophy kill. Their nights having seen quite the proliferation in audience turnout, his options seem endless. His eyes soon hone in on one at the front.

He recognizes her as one of the strippers at a club they visited. Under the sulfurous yellow stage lights, she had teased herself with feather boas and batted her mascaraed eyelashes at him with a sensuality that had his eighteen-year-old libido seething. Entertainer turned spectator, she now observes Paul with the intrigue she must see on men’s faces every night.

He craves the distraction.

When the strings beneath his fingers shake out their final feeble vibrations, Paul bounds from the stage. Not a glance back. For once he doesn’t care to know what his mates get up to. Stopping by the bar, he first orders a pint to help cool his heated skin. But before he can even wipe the savage drops from his chin, a slender body squeezes next to him.

Lips plump and cherry red, the young dancer smiles demurely at him. The luster in her eyes scintillates like the sequins of black and ruby beneath heated lights. Chocolate brown trusses cascade down her shoulders, framing an innocent face that he has seen mature, unfathomably, with every neglected article of clothing. 

“Your band is good,” she says over the surrounding chatter of a new group taking the stage.

Paul nods and smiles. “Danke.”

In broken English and German, they chat through the veil of something carnal between them. They both know what they want and humor conversation out of courtesy but with deaf ears. Back home, Paul is used to reticent, virginal girls who have to be cajoled even for a snog, but the selection around the Reeperbahn has been a more forward bunch than he knew women could be. 

He clocks the exact moment the veil is lifted—hunter now the hunted. 

Eyes of emerald green darken like smoldering foliage, and a manicured hand encircles his bicep, drawing him nearer. She whispers, “Where do you stay?”

His answer comes as fingers threaded between her own, tugging them toward the exit. Not a glance back.

By the time they make it to the Bambi Kino, Paul expects his confidence to have burgeoned. But the assured manner in which she had carried herself on the streets made every step feel like a lamb’s approaching the slaughter. 

In their ill-lit quarters she comes alive, experience bleeding through with every touch. Rouge, lips, and fingernails all the same tinge of crimson red. He burns beneath her body like that primordial sacrifice. With a flare of fight in him—a deep-seated determination not to be outdone or dominated—he swaps their positions on the flimsy mattress. Breathlessly, she laughs at the spark of audacity, moaning as his lower half forces her supple thighs apart.

Kissing her neck, Paul stiff-arms the intimidation of bedding an experienced girl and reacts with instinct. The thready moans pushed into his neck and her guiding hands wildly turn him on. Just when confidence begins to stir, the door kicks open. 

His head whips around, but he can only discern two figures tangled in the dark. Blindly they stumble over to one of the vacant bunks, the sound of smacking lips more prominent than the clumsy footsteps. As Paul’s eyes adjust to the translucency, he finally identifies the bandmate.

Clothes being shed like skin, John covers a young blonde on the bed with his body. She giggles and her pert breasts bounce against her chest, already free from the brassiere he unceremoniously cast to the floor. 

Beneath Paul, the strip-teaser poses no questions or objections to the intrusion, but rather carries on with her ministrations as though it were all part of the routine. Her lithe fingers cradle his jaw in an attempt to reclaim his attention. He lets her have it.

It feels like an interruption in the middle of a song composition, where the next lyrics have dissolved back into his tongue. His hands flutter in indecision over her body, forgetting where they were headed. Clenching his jaw, he tunes out the noises two beds over. Giggles and hums that only remind him of how awkwardly and virginal he had begun with his own girl. 

An impatience now shrouds her face.

“Do it,” she urges, legs spread like a plea as she reaches for his cock.

Two beds over, John coaxes his own lay into giving him head with honeyed praises. Cynically, he questions if this is payback for that one night.

In the end, she rides Paul while he lays back and listens to her breath catch and feels as useful as a man with his head trapped in a pillory. Nothing more than another sheet on the bed.

Never before has his libido failed him so miserably; never before has he let an interruption distract him so. He  _ wants _ the loose and adventurous women. But the promise of freedom has increasingly weighed upon him like fetters around the wrists and ankles. And now he feels misplaced and guilty.

His mind wanders to the curtain-drawn, testosterone-laden room of Nigel Walley. After that first time, his uncertain grip had strengthened with every subsequent gathering spent with his hand down his trousers, feeling the need to attain John’s respect during those sort of perverse initiations. Mentally, he rattles off names that have always seen him through:  _ Brigitte Bardot, Gina Lollabrigida, Marilyn Monroe. _ If that insatiable lad in the armchair saw the beauty wriggling in his lap right now, he would probably never board the boat that would lead him to such emasculation in the first place.

The main satisfaction his climax offers is the confirmation that it’s over. Against the pillow he inclines his head away from the sight of John and the sounds of his pleasure. Bitterly, Paul wonders whom he’s hoping to impress by being so loud.

In the interim of his brooding, the stripper, affronted by his neglect, steps into her dress and heels, and leaves. With unusual detachment he watches her go, then rolls over in bed.

* * *

He wouldn’t necessarily call it overkill. After all, John has always been a randy character—placing bets on how much he could wank in a single day and narrowly falling short of double digits. But the girls on his arms seem to change as often as their tempos. 

While Paul watches hands disappear beneath skirts, he considers—not for the first time—if maybe it  _ was _ just an experiment. The queer life simply isn’t for John.  _ (It was a one-time thing.)  _ And the tension between them dissipates because of it. Sometimes the anarchy within John distends so rapidly that he has to rattle some cages for a touch of relief. That night in the loo was most likely one of those cage-rattling moments.

At least it always enriches him as a performer.

He and Paul play their instruments back-to-back and feel the music dancing up their spines like mallets on a xylophone. The only blokes that snag his attention are the ones with instruments in their hands. The relief that brings Paul is ineffable, but feels strikingly similar to that clench in his stomach when John makes him laugh with dramatic backing harmonies or surprises him with firm hands on his shoulders at the microphone or smiles at him with the promise of a small group about to find their footing in a big city.

Finally Hamburg feels like an elusive seventh string he strummed at the perfect time.

* * *

When Paul lost his virginity at the ripe age of fifteen, his hands were more experienced on the body of his guitar than on that of a girl’s. It was stumbling through the dark without a flashlight; it was clutching the handlebars with nervous fingers during that first bicycle ride. It was a rite of passage, clumsy and self-conscious. But if nothing else, he had the privacy to err without judgement or ridicule.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for George.

Two silhouettes maneuver, wraith-like, across the ever-growing clutter of their small room. Like naughty children alert and bright-eyed on Christmas Eve, Paul, John, and Pete watch a feisty prostitute guide their young friend to an empty bunk. Feeling like an extra in the adult films they view in the cinema, Paul smiles with excitement for his mate and the premiere.

Before the show is even fully underway, Paul’s own mattress dips behind him. He spins his head at breakneck speed. 

“Budge over,” John whispers, as he crowds in bed beside him with an elbow propping himself up. His specs sit high on his nose, hair ruffled from a sleep it won’t yet know.

Frowning up at him, Paul asks, “What’re you doin’?” 

“Better view of the show ‘ere,” John leers, a finger prodding his lower back suggestively.

“Pervert,” he mumbles.

“Oi, I don’t see you hidin’ under the covers.”

Paul shrugs. “Never said I wasn’t one too.”

John considers him for a moment, pensive, then returns his gaze to their friend. “Our kid’s all grown up, eh?”

Paul resettles into the mattress, into the heat of another body. Lip crooking, he watches a hand toss a pair of knickers from the grey bundle. “Not a kid no more.”

They’re all changing, Paul dully realizes in that moment. All of them are finding their Hamburg stories to tell, Hamburg secrets to keep. All except him. Somehow a mere observer of everything despite the dust kicked up in his eyes from their racing ahead of him.

“Look at ‘is little bum go,” John enthuses with another nudge at the small of his back.

Paul smothers his laugh into the pillow.

Whispering in his ear, John adds, “Wanna put some dosh on how long he’ll last?”

“A pound says two minutes,” he wagers, smiling.

“Four. Give ‘im the benefit of the doubt.” 

Paul offers his left hand from between their bodies. Grinning widely, John shakes it.

For the next couple of minutes they spectate in silence. The lump beneath the blankets builds speed. George hardly makes a sound, either rooted deep in concentration or uncomfortable with the audience. 

Warm breath at Paul’s neck reminds him just how close he and John are while witnessing his rite of passage. If listening to your best mate lose his virginity weren’t bizarre enough, they certainly made it so by sharing the adjacent bed. Curled fingers hover at the small of his back. Occasionally, they inch closer, unfurling, or slowly glide back and forth over his thin t-shirt. Paul finds himself leaning into it, reeling from the smell of sweat sleeping on John’s skin that a chaste wash in the sinks never cleanses entirely. 

It isn’t until minute three that he realizes he’s been holding his breath for something…and has also lost the bet.

When George finishes with a sated sigh, all three of them erupt in cheers and applause. John jostles Paul by the shoulder in his enthusiasm. It unhinges him from his thoughts and he whistles with revelry. In the dark, he can see the long flash of George’s canines splitting his grin. His head shakes at their outburst.

“Sleep tight, Macca.” John pats his hip twice. “You owe me a pound.”

* * *

When they aren’t preoccupied with chasing tail, they visit the other local clubs to scout the competition. Another Liverpool group has managed to land in Koschmider’s far superior club, The Kaiserkeller. Paul thinks their own band has plenty proven itself by attracting a fresh audience, but the stiff club-owner hasn’t budged on granting them a spot.

A tall bloke with a strong jaw commands the center of the stage. His mass of blond hair is as striking as his azure suit, to the point where Paul dizzies himself deciding whether to watch the suit flare like a comet or the hair bounce in time with his wild cavorting. Eventually, he settles his gaze on the rickety stage bowing precariously beneath Rory and his Hurricanes’ feet.

Over the caterwaul of instruments and dancers, John shouts, “We’re just as good as them.”

“Drummer is better, though,” Paul points out.

Behind the kit, he threatens to steal the singer’s spotlight with his own zeal. His beard and sage blue eyes make him seem ages older than his bandmates, like the music has slept in his skin for centuries. And only in these unruly hours of the early morning can he beat it out with all the urgency of a wake-up call. 

“Maybe we should win ‘im over,” John jests. “Stu, what d’ye think about sackin’ Pete?” 

They turn to look at the bassist, slumped over the counter with a bent elbow the only thing keeping his head propped up. 

“He’s havin’ a kip under them shades,” George chuckles.

“Sutcliffe, wake the fuck up, love,” John barks, and nudges his arm until his head jerks abruptly in the cradle of his palm.

Paul rolls his eyes. “Makin’ us look slack, you are.” 

“Up yours, I’m fuckin’ knackered,” he argues moodily. “I don’t know how they keep it up like that, the barmy bastards.”

Their indefatigable energy also baffles Paul. With John and his apish antics onstage, they feed the crowd enough unpredictability to maintain a loyal audience. But by the tail end of their sets, they practically need fork tines shoved beneath their eyelids just to keep awake. How these sweaty, wide-eyed blokes power through is a mystery to him.

Rummaging between her breasts, the barmaid slides across the countertop something grey and cylindrical to Stuart, along with a furtive wink. Gradually straightening himself on the stool, he uncaps the container and empties its contents into his palm. Six small pills peer up at them like beady eyes. 

“Nimm es,” the woman says, then motions with her hand as though tossing pieces of popcorn into her mouth. 

Skeptically, they glance at one another. They’ve never had many experiences with drugs; the closest Paul ever comes to a high happens the second an amp jack meets his guitar. But they’ve also never had such relentless hours. 

Smirking, John extends a, “Cheers, lads,” then washes it down with the last swigs of his beer. 

Naturally, they follow his lead at their own paces. 

The pills—Preludin, they come to learn—have them wired like jackrabbits for the rest of the night. Paul is relieved to see Stuart not handling his bass as delicately as a paintbrush for once, even if it took an upper to roughen his edges. It’s an intense sensation—dropped into a Kandinsky where order thrives under the vivid guise of chaos. In a puddle of his own sweat, he half-fears his guitar may electrocute him on stage. The charge is already evident in the staticky red veins crawling along the whites of their eyes. 

And John’s scarcely have a chance to remain still, let alone single out anyone in the audience. For some reason that grants Paul a sense of ease.

To get to sleep that morning, they down more pills with a soporific effect. Such a drastic transition has his mind cobwebby and lagged. Quickly, he learns the high isn’t worth the effort it takes to come down from it. 

At least none of them can get up to anything when they’re asleep, which is more than Paul can say for them when they’re awake.

* * *

Another tour of the Reeperbahn—this time guided by Tony Sheridan—rekindles that sleeping desire in John’s eyes. It seems to shine with more lucency than before, or maybe Paul is more blinded by it than the first time. After all, when John told him it was a one-time thing, he had no reason not to believe him.

After meeting Tony at The Top Ten and bonding as blood-brothers, he introduced them to the seedier, more obscure places. As it turned out, there was a lot their exuberant eyes had overlooked during their initial jaunt. Strip joints where the girls left  _ nothing _ to the imagination, mud-wrestling arenas where the women duked it out as aggressively as any bloke, and whores to suit anyone’s preference on the Herberstrasse. 

“What’s that place there?” Pete asks. His finger directs their gazes to a flickering sign of fluorescent purple that reads:  _ Freefall. _

In both color and name it distinguishes itself from the surrounding clubs. The inclination of the font seems to bend over the street in an obscene whisper. Fewer people linger at the building’s facade, somewhat desolating its appearance; yet somehow that only piques the intrigue. Now that Pete has singled it out, Paul doesn’t know how he missed it. 

Tony snorts. “Pub for dykes, fairies, and just about everythin’ in between.” 

For a split second, John and Paul share a glance; the magic slurs spoken. It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction for the both of them, and a tacit moment of defeat. Those words never held any weight before—never encouraged Paul to read the expression on John’s face. Now, they’ve let the words have authority over them.

As Paul looks away, he feels Tony’s eyes narrowly leaving the side of his face. So swift, he almost believes it hadn’t happened at all. The pavement no longer feels wide enough for the six of them.

“Fancied a look did you, Pete?” John goads, finally peeling his eyes away from the sign.

“We’ll come round for you later while you have yer fun,” Stuart chimes in, nudging the drummer towards the club as a go-ahead.

Peevishly, he shoves him off. “Yer mum already told me all I need to know about it.”

“Far as I’m concerned, yer all bent as a butcher’s hook,” George mutters with a roll of his eyes. “Now can we go for a bevvy already?”

Tony claps their younger friend on the shoulder and steers him up the pavement. “Good to know one of ye’s got some sense.”

Last to fall into line, John lingers…eyes still drinking in  _ Freefall  _ for a fleeting second. As Paul gauges him, the garish signs around them seem to tarnish in his periphery—colors regressing into bleak monochrome. Part of him worries he’s witness to the incipiency of an appetite for something taboo and off-beat. One John hadn’t quite satiated that night in the loo. 

A larger part of him prefers to turn a blind eye.

From there, Tony escorts them to a location he frequents most—one of the no-clothes-left-behind stipclubs. Inside, the atmosphere wraps around him like a titillating breath. Paul embraces the heat of it. With deliberate passivity he allows the debauchery to feast at his own tendons for once. Wisps of perfume and heels high enough to stomp hearts but avoid the blood have his head pivoting every which way. Neck limber and unkinked from the crick put there by  _ Freefall. _

The lighting is subdued enough that he can’t see what Tony or the lot of them are up to; the beer is solid enough in his stomach that he wouldn’t care even if he could. Throughout the course of the night, the pints surround him like a new group of friends who galvanize him into trying his luck with another experienced girl again. The chances of bedding the petite blonde perched on his lap are favorable, until John unceremoniously jerks him up and tells him they’re all ready to go. With an indignant huff, the girl falls aside to the seat cushion. More pissed than he realized, the abrupt demand to stand upright is met with little verbal resistance. With an equally sloshed John bolstering him by way of an arm around his waist, he staggers back to their room, sloppy drunk.

A dark complacency flocks over him like a murder of crows at being the only bloke hanging off John’s arm tonight.

When they finally arrive at the Bambi Kino John dumps him onto the bed, limbs jostling with ragdoll lifelessness. Before he can leave him to his own devices, Paul toes his hip with a boot and waves it. Rolling his eyes, John catches the aloft foot by the heel and tugs off the boot.

“Lazy,” he tosses one at him, “sod,” then the other.

Paul snickers, his dodges uncoordinated. Through long lashes, he studies John at the foot of the bed, arms akimbo and eyes distant as if engaged in their own scrutiny. A moment that is perhaps better suited for a bedroom window.

Through his aureate lens of intoxication, his mind tries to visualize John with another bloke. Even between two  _ properly _ queer men, he’s never been quite able to work out the mechanics of it. He can’t imagine John bending over for anyone, let alone another man.

“Trousers too?” John asks.

Paul blinks slowly. “Aye.”

Whatever questions had been dancing on the tip of his tongue instantly fall away.

One-handedly, he unbuttons the fly, eyes unflinchingly on Paul’s. He swallows thickly while the leather is heaved down his endlessly long legs. The stark contrast of white, dexterous hands on his wrinkled black trousers leaves Paul’s thoughts more vacant than a silent film. Calloused fingertips trip over his skin—a sobering touch. As sobering as a wrist over a flame, that is. 

Wadding them up, John chucks them at his head. Paul leaves them there—an opaque veil of shame—and is out cold within minutes.

He has no idea what time it is when an unruly stomach forces him out of his sleep. His leather trousers nearly stick to his sweaty face as he bolts upright. More sober now, he at least has enough sense to lumber to the toilets first. Harsh white light bathes the room after he blindly scours the wall for the switch.

“Jesus fucking  _ Christ, _ Paul!”

He freezes, heart jolting.

Witnessing it through a mirror, then through the even more miniscule crack of a stall door, was one thing. Barging in on it with no smokescreen is entirely different. Another phantasmagoric scene he struggles to process while he stands there on the cold tiles in nothing but his Y-fronts—yet somehow not the most naked and vulnerable person in the room.

At the far corner of the loo, John frantically yanks his trousers up, zip still open-mouthed, and the kneeling stranger scurries on his knees like a spooked animal to put distance between them. The lad’s hair is unkempt and as black as his blown pupils. His chin and plush lips glisten with something that only exacerbates Paul’s nausea. A poor man’s Elvis, and the primal fear on his face is the only thing inhibiting that looking-in-a-mirror feeling. 

“Get the fuck out,” John hisses.

Paul gapes for a moment, stomach weltering furiously. Then rushes to empty his stomach into the sink. Over the ringing in his ears, he manages to hear: “S’alright, love, he won’t tell.”

Head bowed over the sink, those placating words seeming to ricochet within the bowl and pummel his skull. He refuses to look into the mirror and see their effect on him. The sound of the door shutting tells him the reassurances must not have translated anyway.

“Fuckin’ unbelieva—”

“Not now, John—”

“You got real shit timin’ for a musician,” he needles on, apoplectic. 

Around the porcelain Paul’s knuckles whiten.  _ “Me?” _ he snaps incredulously. “You’re doin’ this right under our noses!”

“Funny how it’s only you who ever finds me, though. D’ye keep doin’ this on purpose?”

“Do  _ you? _ I mean, fuckin’ hell, John, are you  _ tryin’ _ to get caught?”

He scoffs, eyes narrowed. “You don’t exactly make it easy to have any privacy round ‘ere.”

“Right—forgive me for not spewin’ in the bed. Thought you’d’ve learned by now the bog’s a daft place to sneak off to. We’re livin’ in a fuckin’ matchbox, mate—if it wasn’t me, it’d just be one of them.”

John clenches his jaw, irritation clouding his features. 

Paul can’t believe they’re going through this again. After the first incident, he had shied away from the pressing questions to appease his friend. When John swore it off as an isolated experience, he had no reason not to trust him, had he? 

“You told me that last time was it, John,” Paul reminds him, voice scented with desperation. “So what am I supposed to think now?”

In brittle pieces his anger chips away to the impenetrable aloofness buried underneath. He would drop to his knees to collect it all if he could. Anything is preferable to the stoniness of his indifference. 

“I don’t need your slap on the wrist,” John mutters, “and I don’t need to waste my time explainin’ myself to you either.”

“If this is gonna be a regular thing, I’d like to know.”

His lips curl wickedly. “Why, so you don’t miss the show?”

“Fuck you.”

With a shake of his head, Paul faces the sinks again, nerves bristling. When the hollow eye of the drain becomes too emblematic of the kneeling stranger’s dark features and this conversation headed nowhere, he squeezes his eyes closed. 

“Worry about playin’ the fuckin’ gigs, how ‘bout tha’?” Finally, John zips the gaping mouth of his trousers and turns to exit the room. “S’what yer here for.”

“That’s what  _ we’re _ here for!” Paul shouts at the slammed door. Its echo off the tiles and metal is a more solid answer than any received from John.

He spits into the sink to rid himself of the conversation’s sour aftertaste. He doesn’t fail to notice the absence of excuses this time. No  _ one-time-things. _

* * *

“‘Ey, Paul, Tony thought you were a queer. Says to me, ‘Is he gay or somethin’?’”

The words fly from his mouth like an unchewed scrap of food. He lifts his gaze from his scarcely touched plate to Pete’s impish grin, eyes unblinking as though waiting for a knee-jerk reaction. If Paul’s appetite hadn’t already abandoned him, it certainly would have now.

“A queer?” he parrots, as unperturbed as possible. “Why the fuck’s he think that?”

He resists cutting his eyes to John. Paul doesn’t suspect he would throw him under the bus to protect his own hide. But they also haven’t uttered more words than necessary to one another since last night.

“Don’t be daft. That girly face an’ them plucked eyebrows of yours, probably.”

Steeling his expression, he shuffles in his seat. “Piss off. What’d you tell ‘im, then?”

“Said it was Stu he had to keep an eye on.” Pete flips his wrist in an exaggeratedly feminine manner. “Those artsy types, y’know.” 

Suddenly, John fixes him with the glare of a basilisk. “You put as much effort into them drums as you do bein’ such a gobshite, maybe we’d actually land a spot in Tony’s clubs.”

And extinguishing his cigarette in Pete’s tea, he slides from their booth. Paul’s stomach knots itself as he watches him shove out of the cafe and down the pavement until his tense shoulders are little more than a line of leather in the midday gloom. 

Pete scoffs. “Why’s he so cheesed off?”

“You know how those prellies do ‘im,” George retorts, and lackadaisically makes a game of tossing more trash into Pete’s cup. “Prob’ly still comin’ down.”

“For the record,” Stuart interjects casually, “it was you who singled out the poofter pub first.”

The rest of their trivial bickering eddies around Paul’s head. He gazes back out the window, at the last faded line of John’s shoulders. His legs had twitched with the urge to chase after him but remembered the buckle often felt every time he finds him. What could he possibly say anyway? 

It’s never the ones standing directly in front of the fireplace who feel the heat, but those on the periphery, never anticipating to get burned. 

* * *

Paul stares at the blank page as though it were the partition in a confessional.

_ Dear Dad and Mike _

_ A few nights ago I caught John shagging some bloke in the loo at the Indra. I was almost sick right there in the sinks but somehow made it back to the counter. Last night I caught him again but couldn’t hold it in this time. I haven’t told anybody but when John’s being a prick I want to shout it into the mic or something. Sometimes I’m afraid he might actually be a queer but I’ve never said that out loud either.  _

_ We take pills to stay awake and then more pills to fall asleep. If you saw where I slept, you’d drag me out of here by the collar. No time to think, no time to eat, no time to yawn. Go, go, go! The other lads don’t seem to mind it but I might go mad here. _

_ He’s got a type too, John does. I can’t say what sort of chaps I would’ve thought he might go for because my guess would’ve been none. But there’s something about them. A lot of pretty faces. _

_ Anyway, I’d rather be home. _

He blinks and touches the lead to the paper.


	3. The Beautiful City without Mercy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tomorrow is my birthday, so I wanted to gift y'all with something since you've already given me so much.
> 
> sorry for the slow update, but I'm working on wrapping this one up. hope you still enjoy!
> 
> my great friend [@hide-your-bugs-away](https://hide-your-bugs-away.tumblr.com) has done some amazing fan art for [Chapter 1](https://hide-your-bugs-away.tumblr.com/post/190359267054/aaa-unchaineddaisychain-i-told-you-the-next-thing) and [Chapter 2](https://hide-your-bugs-away.tumblr.com/post/641258932001783808/couldnt-help-but-make-some-more-fanart-for-all) of this fic as birthday traditions for me (bc yes, that's how long I take to update).

A bittersweet distraction arrives in the form of an attractive and artistically talented German trio. Over the weeks their type—existentialists with achromatic clothes and cropped, French-inspired haircuts—has started to offset the usual crowd of drunken sailors and rambunctious roustabouts. 

After stowing away his guitar in hopes to exchange it for a pint, Paul notices that John and Stu are a step ahead of him. On the rickety bar stools they converse with a young blonde girl and two blokes on either side of her. The scene momentarily gives Paul pause. Every night he has been reluctant to approach John in the midst of conversation with anyone even remotely handsome, uncertain of what he may walk into.

But when John turns his head to see that Paul has sidled up next to him at the bar, he swats his arm and says, “Oi, Paul, this is Jürgen, Astrid, an’ Klaus. Students at the uni, they dig our sound.”

Nodding affirmatively, Astrid leans forward. “I was just telling your friends that I would love to take some pictures of the group.”

“Only if you could make us look professional,” he teases, slipping on his charm like a snug coat.

She simpers. “I’d never make you seem so boring as that.”

“Smart girl,” Stuart laughs and throws a hand up for the barmaid. “Let’s get her a bevvy.”

If their affected style hadn’t already tipped him off, it only takes a few minutes of conversation for Paul to realize he has much less in common with the art students than John and Stuart do. Nursing a pint of his own, he listens to their rarified discussions on everything that isn’t the music he listens to or the books he reads or the commonplace things he enjoys. He waits for an opportunity to chime in somewhere, about  _ anything. _ Little more than a social pariah in their presence, he only continues to wait.

The celerity with which John can slip in and out of these versions of himself like toggling a light switch has always fascinated Paul.  _ Flip! _ He’s energetic, luminescent, and promising Paul a world the size of Germany.  _ Flip! _ He’s brooding, dark, and hiding his secrets in the grimy toilets of clubs or cinemas. 

An amiable slap between his shoulder blades is the antecedent to a rescue Paul has been craving desperately. He pivots on his stool and right into George’s offer of ditching the joint for the Kaiserkeller. With an eager nod Paul downs the last gulps from his stein and follows his friend outside. The lack of curious shouts at his back tells him his presence won’t be missed too much anyway.

In the brisk and raucous air outside of the club, George explains, “You looked dead bored in there, so I thought I’d swoop in.”

“Ta,” Paul chuckles. “They were prattlin’ away about art an’ all that rot. Not really my scene, y’know.” 

“Do you ever wonder if it’s actually their scene either?”

“John wouldn’t waste his time puttin’ anything on.” He tilts his head and forces his hands into his pockets. “He’s got a lot of sides to him, he does.”

“Aye,” George comments idly. “Front an’ back, left an’ right.”

“Among others,” he snorts. 

For a foolhardy moment, Paul considers airing John’s dirty laundry on these even filthier streets. George has already saved him once tonight, and maybe he could do it again by halving the burden of secrecy. What’s to say he isn’t already wise to some of John’s behavior and potentially a witness himself? The words wait on the tip of his tongue with bent legs, ready for the go-ahead.

“What?”

Paul blinks dazedly, the graininess of street lamps steadily coming back into view. “Hm?”

“You got all spacy,” George says, shuffling his gaze between the pavement and Paul’s pinched face. “What’re you thinkin’ about?”

Finking out, he forces a smirk and teases, “How I walked out of one dull conversation and straight into another.”

“Maybe it’s you who’s got the problem then,” his friend argues. Neons glint off his grin, and Paul genuinely laughs, because he doesn’t even know the half of it.

In the poorly ventilated basement, he loosens up and listens with amusement as George smooth-talks any gullible drunkard with his designated cover story. Each of them were assigned one in case their reasons for being in the country were questioned by authorities. Most nights they can be whomever they wish to be. There’s something exciting in that.

And it becomes an appealing fallback when they eventually find themselves in the redoubtable presence of Rory Storm’s bearded and bejeweled drummer, Ritchie Starkey. With a streak of grey in his coiffed hair, probably stained by the smoke of his American cigarettes, he seems wise beyond his years.

Most importantly of all, however, he doesn’t say a goddamn thing about art.

Throughout the rest of the night, Paul is astounded at how the company of one person can so considerably compensate for that of five. A few hours with George begins to feel like catching up on a few  _ years,  _ with so much of his attention having been hyper-fixated on John. Who John is seeing, what John is doing,  _ why _ John is doing. 

He shouldn’t care this much.

But upon returning to their storage closet some hours later, Paul finds he’s not alone in his overbearing concerns. Squalls of laughter and beery breath accompany George and himself into the room and its lethargic scene. The pensive conversations on art and culture seem to have touched the lads’ moods with a heavy hand. Hunched over his notebook in a crude imitation of The Thinker, Stuart scrawls another masterpiece with a stick of charcoal stiff between his fingers like a sixth gangrenous one. A slumbering drummer lies in the bed between him and John, who glances down from the cracked plaster ceiling and eddy of smoke to their noisy arrival. 

“Where’d you get off to?” he asks when Paul sits on the adjacent bed to tug off his boots.

“Went out with George for a bit.”

John faces him in bed, supported by an elbow and his sleeves shirt falling loosely over his collarbone. “You never said anything.”

“I’m meant to check in with you, am I?” Paul asks, and the frigidity of his words takes even himself aback. 

“I’d rather appreciate it if you did actually.”

He nods, once, and braces his hands on his knees. “Okay, we’ll start checkin’ in with each other then.”

“Off to bed now, are you?”

“I think so, if that’s alright with you, John.”

“Jolly good.”

Before he can fire back another petty retort, Pete grouses from his bunk, “Will you two shut the fuck up?”

Stuart smirks into his sketchbook. Paul only wishes he could laugh at the absurdity of it all.

* * *

As if to spite him, John stops being so careless. Paul doesn’t know where he slinks off to for these unlawful dalliances anymore, but he knows they still happen over the weeks. In the sulfurous light of their sardine-can room, sweaty stage clothes are stripped away and little hints tossed Paul’s way. When he once casually commented on a purple line of bruising on John’s knees, he had excused it with a quip about ending his nights with a little prayer. After that one, Paul has learned to keep his mouth shut. 

Even when John hauls his skeletons from the closet and onto the stage with the band, rattling the bones like a dusty old instrument, he keeps his mouth shut. Tonight he’s wired from Prellys and wearing a toilet seat around his neck like a bulky string of pearls. He saunters up to the microphone and announces, “This next one is for all the pretty boys out there,” before jumping into their rendition of “Ain’t She Sweet.”

The audience guffaws and whistles. But the words make Paul feel as clamped down and stiff as the strings beneath the capo on John’s guitar. The urge to snatch the microphone from him and clue everyone in on just how much truth is in his jokes is a subcutaneous itch. Throughout their set he fights valiantly not to scratch it. 

It spreads like hives, until Paul feels the tension zinging through the piano keys beneath his reddened fingers. It takes only a little push to send him over the edge. And when he first hears the dead note, Paul cuts his eyes menacingly to Stuart. The bassist’s back is to the crowd in an effort to conceal his subpar musicianship, but during their stay it has only garnered him an air of mystique in these parts. To Paul, it’ll always make him an easy target, though.

“Fuckin’ clean it up, Stu,” he warns with a gruffness offset by their high-tempo tune.

“Lay off.”

“Thought you’d know what yer doin’ by now.”

Finally, Stuart acknowledges him, his glare lethal even behind the shades. “You don’t like the way I do it, do it yerself.”

“An’ the same goes for Astrid, does it?”

His words are the filthy fingernail jabbed into the wound. In a flailing of limbs and fury, Stuart lunges at him on the bench and knocks him to the floor. The wooden stage scolds his back. The audience roars. One misplaced note becomes several as the others attempt to mitigate the tussle with shouts of, “Oi! Stop it, you two!” 

By the time John hauls Stuart off him by the collar, Paul is left feeling only more pathetic. Nothing more than a schoolyard scuffle between them—not even a drop of blood drawn to make him feel something again. 

Bucking from the hands holding him back, Stuart snatches his shades from the floor and brandishes them at Paul like a weapon. “You can’t stand bein’ the black sheep for once!” he accuses. “I feel fuckin’ sorry for you.”

The words are one final blow before he storms off the stage. Paul glares after him with gritted teeth. When he similarly lumbers off the floor, the other three stir and make way for him as he lifts the piano bench upright again. His mouth tastes of copper despite shedding no blood and he spits onto the floor after taking his seat. 

“Let’s get on with it,” he barks at the leery stares from his bandmates.

Nods pass amongst them, but Paul is already trained on the keys at his fingers. He may be the pathetic outcast in their clique, but he refuses to be the bloke who walked away from the stage.

Of course, John approaches him about the conflict at the end of the set. The final thrums of music had scarcely settled in the air before he hit the streets for home. But his hopes to elude John prove futile when that familiar shout sounds at his back. Ignoring the call of his name, Paul steadies on.

“Oi, don’t ye hear me?” his friend tries when he catches up to him.

Hunched into himself, he quickens his pace. “‘M knackered, John.”

“Ye don’t say. The fuck was that about?”

“Just a row, that’s all.”

“C’mon now, ‘ang on a second.” He steers Paul by the arm to a halt in the middle of the street. Carefully cradling his face, he inspects any damage through narrowed eyes, then snorts. “Didn’t land one did he, the pacifist.” 

Annoyed, Paul tilts out of his grip. 

“You were askin’ for it, y’know, bringin’ his girl into it.”

“Why’re you defendin’ him? He’s keepin’ the group down,” he finally snaps. “Me an’ George are the only ones takin’ this gig serious.”

“Just you two, eh? I’m doin’ my fuckin’ part and you can’t say I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are. And then some.”

The accusation tastes only as good as resentment can. John eyes him in such a scathing way that he feels flung to the floor all over again, with nowhere else to fall. 

“Oi,” he growls with a solid shove to Paul’s chest, “Stu went fuckin’ easy on ye, y’know.”

“And  _ you’re _ goin’ easy on  _ him. _ He’s barely in the group anymore with his head shoved so far up those exis’ arses.”

“Surprised you can tell with yours shoved so far up yer own. Cash in early if you want, mate, ‘cos Stu’s as much a part of this as the rest of us.”

Paul remembers the days where they could take the mick out of Stuart and share a snicker at his expense. He never stood up for himself. But somewhere along the way he’s earned John’s stamp of approval. It only makes him fear just how close those two have become in that Gambier Terrace flat of theirs.

Face screwed up tight, John looks like he’s itching for a drink. When he heads back towards the club, Paul figures he plans to have just that. 

He sighs. Weaving a hand through his hair, that wool of a black sheep, he continues down the street. The wind sneers at his back like the tune of a lonely trumpeter.

* * *

After a frankly overdue noise complaint, The Indra shuts down and even more strenuous hours pile on them at the superior Kaiserkeller. The news comes as somewhat of a compliment to the band (clearly they’re getting  _ someone’s _ attention) and an early birthday present for John.

This leads to more trips to Rosa—their grandmotherly dealer—whose pills rattle in her pockets like a ring of keys. Hands cupped before her with the famishment of Dickensian orphans, they stock up on Prellys before and during shows. While John swallows them by the handfuls, Paul only opts for one and pretends to be as wired as everyone else. 

With their new location also comes a new addition to their contract. Their stay has now been extended to New Years Eve. Paul wonders if he can last that long.

But as it turns out, surviving John’s birthday will be the greater challenge.

* * *

“What d’ye figure: a nudey mag or proper prozzy?”

“You can’t go down on a piece of paper,” Pete points out, but George quirks a bushy eyebrow.

“Aye, but you can’t keep a prozzy under the bed to use anytime you want either.” 

“Clearly you’ve been beddin’ the wrong birds, mate.”

They laugh, carefree and hearty. Paul stares blankly at another letter to home while they continue to ruminate over the appropriate birthday gift for John. Why can’t they pitch in for a smart coat instead, or a decent meal for a change? Why does it have to be some nameless tart or disposable magazine that’ll only be good to him for a few pumps of his fist? 

But he doesn’t offer his alternatives. Their own spat on the street left no bad blood between them. With no real skin in the fight between Stu and himself, John has carried on as aloof as usual. Sometimes they even get on the same as they did before they left home. Smiles shared above a sheet of lyrics, playful roughhouse beneath the fluorescence of restroom lights—Paul clings to those moments like a man gasping for air. Because at times like these, when lust crooks her red-tipped finger, he loathes the suffocation.

The door to their room opens and Pete decides, “Let’s just ask the man of the hour himself. John, would ye rather ‘ave a photo of some tits or the real deal?”

George frowns deeply. “What the fuck, man?!”

“Well, he still ain’t seen what we’ll pick for ‘im, has he?”

“Just cough up the dosh, won’t you, lads?” He stands before them with a greedy, upturned palm. “After seein’ Pete’s bird the other night, I think I’d fancy me own pick of the litter.” 

They release the onus of decision with a shrug of their shoulders and hand over the money. Paul watches the transaction, silent. 

Pocketing their gift, John winks. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Forever a hurricane, he’s gone as quick as he arrives. The door shuts eagerly behind him and its echo yawns in the chambers of Paul’s chest. He doubts the lads would hand over the cash so readily if they knew how it’s being spent. Not that he should be losing any sleep over it for being the one in the know. He has letters to write home, a girl prepared to give him the world. And yet those words on the page seem so intangible, so miniscule compared to this urgency inherent in the city.

He offers them one last glance before standing from his bed. 

“Alright, Paul?” George asks on his way out.

He hands them a vague excuse, tosses the half-written letter into his suitcase, and grabs his coat.

Around the Reeperbahn he purveys the streets for potential. It may not be what his feet have led him towards, but it’s what his warden of a conscience knows he should be searching for instead. Tonight, he finds his taste to be excessively particular. A nose too crooked, shoulders too broad, makeup too heavy. It becomes easy to find what he isn’t looking for when he finds what he subconsciously has been.

It’s a posture that has become familiar from years onstage. He can pick it out of a crowd, and has done so countless times. Having had a hunch he would find him on this side of town, Paul watches John curiously from across the street. His head pivots left and right like a meerkat on guard but with half the range of vision. Collar taut around his neck, he shoves his hands into his pockets and shuffles down a flight of stairs. 

Ignoring the wrench in his gut, he follows him. 

* * *

For a moment he wonders if he entered a wrong door somewhere, because this seems a far cry from the type of scene he would expect to rouse John’s intrigue. Half of the barmaids only look good from one side. The air reeks of sweat and leather, either from tight clothes or loosened morals. Passing eyes ogle Paul with a lewdness that has him itching in his skin. Androgyny is the open secret. And something tells him he’d have to check beneath the skirt of anyone he took back to their hovel. 

Finally, he notices the neon sign above the jazz band onstage. Letters flash erratically like missing teeth in a bar brawl, but its luminescence is no less recognizable.  _ Freefall. _

Mortified, he turns to leave. Tony Sheridan’s repulsed description of the club mocks him with every step to the exit. So this is it—the confirmation he ignorantly sought. And for what? To spare himself the torment of walking in on something by charging past the frontlines on his own terms? It still doesn’t ease his mind in the slightest.

In his blind haste he bumps into a lanky stranger, who pins him in place with heady eyes. “Hallo, süße Sache.” 

“Erm, sorry, I—”

_ “Paul?” _

His shoulders hitch at the nasally voice. He curses himself for not ducking out sooner, for even stepping foot inside at all. Cheeks ablaze, he pivots on his heel and gapes at John. Before he can speak, though, his friend’s eyes narrow on the bloke making a pass at him. “‘Ey, he’s taken, alright? Er ist mein.”

Paul blinks, neither confirms nor denies it. 

At once John is shepherding him to a more secluded area, farther away from the exit and deeper into the throngs of debauchery. “What the fuck’re you doin’ here?” he demands. “Do you know where you are?”

Paul’s eyes roam back to the glaring neon. It singes the whites of his eyes, stains every thought deep purple. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Did you follow me?”

Already he senses a change in John’s demeanor. He isn’t lashing out or as acerbic as the times he caught him with blokes in less discreet places. He seems more in his element here, like Paul is the outsider—the one with something to hide. The comfortability throws him off kilter.

“We said we’d check in with each other.”

John studies him for a moment. His own words are served back to him so confidently that Paul can hardly taste the bullshit on his tongue. Perhaps it’s a lame excuse, but some unnamable force has them hot on each other’s heels like paranoid girlfriends. A tilt of John’s head luckily knocks that daft notion right off Paul’s shoulder.

“C’mon then.” 

At that they grab a table by a far back wall, hiding away like disregarded books on a shelf. There’s something devastatingly romantic about that sort of existence. 

Once seated, John goes on, “Blokes like you ought to be more careful waltzin’ into a place like this. They’ll eat you up.”

Paul bristles. “I’d just been on my way out anyroad.”

“Disgusted, were you?”

“No.”

The swift answer rings in his ears like a backfired engine. But that’s just it, isn’t it? This whole time he has wanted to see John differently but can’t. Despite everything, this is the same person he has known for years. No matter how many shadows he dwells in, his light shines with the obstinacy of a candle in a womb. Maybe Paul is the first person who has never tried to snuff him out.

Conversationally, he tries, “This your first time here?”

John rolls his eyes with a sigh. “Christ, do me a favor and spare me the small talk?”

“Maybe I should just go an—”

“No, don’t—you don’t hafta go.” The weight of another sigh sinks him further into his seat.  _ “Yes, _ this is my first time, and, I dunno, I reckon it’s good to see a familiar face, even if….”

He chugs a gulp of beer as if to drown himself out; his burning wick sizzles. But Paul longs to know all of the  _ even-if’s. _

A bottomless supply of drinks helps loosen their lips. With each one, John seems to have forgiven, or at least forgotten, Paul spoiling his little birthday treat. As for himself, Paul melts more comfortably into the atmosphere. Even in a roomful of brutes who could overpower him for his boyish good looks, it feels safer than most others they frequent. In fact, if he closes his eyes, the club smells and sounds no different than any other. It’s only when he opens them—and catches two lads necking in the corner or two girls slow-dancing under the hazy lights—that the illusion shatters. 

The shards are painful only in the way true beauty is.

Every now and then, John’s gaze follows a bloke passing their table or lingers on one in the crowd. Paul observes these moments attentively. He looks for the common denominator that catches his friend’s eye again and again. Their features delicate and dark at once, angels dipped in ink. Something about them has him unable to resist the magnetic draw.

_ They look like me. _

The revelation lands right there in his lap, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. The large eyes of one bathroom escort, the shock of raven hair from the one after that: it becomes glaringly obvious that each pretty face is an overlay for some ideal big picture. And one that Paul struggles to unearth meaning from. Could it all be sheer coincidence? 

Lips parted, he stares at John in bafflement.

He smiles back, drunk and naive, with eyes half-mast. “What?”

“Nothing,” Paul mutters. With a finger’s edge, he laps up a drop of sweat from the stained glass of his pint; it soothes the heat of his skin. “Is there somethin’, like…specific you look for?”

“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were a bit curious yourself.” 

“No…well, in a way maybe. We chat shit about girls.”

John eyes him, unconvinced. “This is different. You know it’s different.”

“Is it? How do you go about chattin’ up a bloke?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets.”

“Knowin’ you, it can’t be all that magical.”

John arches an eyebrow in challenge. Suddenly his chair shifts, along with Paul’s stomach as he senses something more about to happen. Their knees knock beneath the table. His mind lags in all of the abrupt movements. 

As John settles one hand along the back of Paul’s chair, he extends the other for a handshake. “Name’s John.”

Brow furrowed, he laughs, “What’re you doin’?”

“Same as anyone, I reckon. Lookin’ for a bit of company tonight.”

That same gut feeling that warned him against following John into the club now screams at him not to follow him into this daft roleplay. But the hooded eyes on him, the sense of ease that their acknowledgement brings, has him gripping John’s hand nonetheless. “Paul.”

“Paul? I like you, Paul, I like everything about you. I like the risk you took here tonight.”

“What risk is that?”

“Rags like those.”

He looks down at his worn leather coat and lifts a shoulder. “Still enough to get your attention, it seems.”

“Aye, it seems…it seems. But let’s see if you can keep it.”

To be on the receiving end of a charm exuding night after night feels almost surreal. His stomach curls at this sort of attention from John. To know that the eyes tracking the shape of his speech or the posture leaning into his own like the arch of a parenthesis, all stems from a place of desire. Whether contrived or sincere, the lines blur worse than his intoxicated vision. 

They fall into the tired small talk John confessed to loathing, fixed with an off-the-cuff backstory from Paul. Mere minutes in, he already begins to feel ridiculous for playing along. Even more so when John’s attention wavers and he passes sly winks to strangers across the room like a courtesy drink. It disrupts Paul’s stream of consciousness. The actions negate every encouraging word their improvised chat began with. He slips from the charade of it, genuinely hurt that his presence can be overlooked in much the same way as it has been within the milieu of hip German artists. 

At his gradual lapse into silence, John asks, “Somethin’ wrong?”

“I—aren’t you listening?”

A catty smile reshapes his lips. “Feelin’ a bit ignored, were you? Unheard? Tried to figure out the next best thing to say to reel me back into you.”

His tone has dropped, thick and bassy. A thumb strokes the ball of his shoulder, and in the certitude of John’s evaluation Paul hadn’t even felt the arm close around him. He squirms, wormlike, on the hook of his words and touch.

“Most girls know what they deserve. Most lads want what they can’t have. Feel like they’ve got something to prove, they have.” He leans in, lips grazing the shell of his ear when he whispers, “An’ for that single moment I had you wrapped ‘round my finger.”

Paul’s eyes flutter. So much self-certainty has graced John’s approach that he nearly feels gaslit from it all.

“But you know what?” His head inclines, of its own accord, into the question—the heat of John’s breath. His friend takes it as all the answer he needs. “Yer actually the first one who’s spoke any English and you still couldn’t say a word.”

The chair legs grate against the floor as he resituates himself. Demonstration over. The air rushes back to Paul’s face, hardly a relief with the humidity of it. Seemingly unfazed by the tension, John downs the rest of his pint while Paul sits there prickling with firecrackers under his skin.

Rising from the table, John tosses a handful of coins on top of it. “Ready to get outta here?”

Paul clears his throat and frowns. “Really? I figured ye’d be putin’ that quid to more use.”

“I’ve had my fill tonight.” Fondly, he slings an arm around Paul’s shoulders when he stands. “You’ve well an’ spent me, you devil.”

He smiles, leans heavily into John’s side. He even smells like a secret and makes Paul feel as safely kept as one, with every finger around him an indentation of the words,  _ “Er ist mein.” _ If even for a moment he experienced the reality of those words, it was one worth having.

In comparison, returning to their room sounds entirely unappealing. 

“I don’t really feel like goin’ back yet,” Paul tells him as they meander beneath the charcoal sky. “So stuffy in there, I can actually breathe out here.”

“Nothin’ like fresh air,” John says, taking a touch of contradiction out of his pocket along with his cigarettes. 

He smiles, watching him light it. “Got another?”

Not for the first time, John offers the cigarette already in his mouth. Their eyes hold as, this time, Paul accepts it. Old promises rush onto his tongue and he lets them linger there now, aged like fine wine. 

“Thought you didn’t want me germs,” John says evenly.

“Things change. You should know that better than anyone.”

They pass it back and forth and share something bigger than themselves, not unlike the gradients of polished wood running parallel. He can’t help but envision the reality in which he accepted that first smoke weeks ago. 

“Things do change. They change all the time,” John concedes, and when he passes the cigarette back Paul tastes the moisture of his lips on the filter. “It’s people who’re stubborn about it.”

“Stubborn or scared?”

“You tell me.”

He blinks, the cigarette burning between his fingers. “I’m….” 

The consonants blur in his scotch-soaked brain. Is he stubborn or scared or scared of just how stubborn he can really be? 

Ultimately, his body decides for him. Before he can rationalize it, his face ducks into the crook of John’s neck where the secrecy is warmest. With lilac fragility he presses kisses to his salty skin. So chaste yet eager—an embodiment of that obstinate fear. The thump of John’s pulse keeps him close, though he can hardly call it reciprocation.

He shrugs at the ticklishness and chuckles, “Paul, c’mon.”

“Maybe I am curious,” he confesses, encouraged. “Maybe I wanna know what it’s like.”

Their fringes bristle gratingly as John tips his head down, something radioactive swimming between the eye contact. A breeze carries that new smell of secrecy on its back and Paul’s breath catches at the chill. John’s gaze flicks to his lips, the sound more akin to a taste at this proximity. He aches for something to happen. What do those other lads have that he couldn’t similarly offer?

“Yer bloody sloshed, love.”

“Just once….”

A careful whisper, yet John’s expression drops with the weight of bricks. In that fateful moment he holds Paul’s world between his teeth…then clenches his jaw. “Maybe there’s some takers in the club.”

Distance surges between them so quickly that he’s blindsided by the fresh air. Winded, he chokes on it. 

Was the electricity between them all night—the touches and mock-flirting—merely faulty wiring? Embarrassment rushes into his throat, bilious and foul. He swallows, mouth tacky, and pulls hard on the cigarette in hopes to smoke himself into oblivion. And yet it clears around him to an alleyway void of John but none of the misery he left behind.

* * *

The heartache spreads like an overgrowth of kudzu. Rejection on the heels of hope hadn’t seemed like much of a flirtatious tactic to him, until he realizes that he has been buying into it for years now.

With a healthy dose of spite, he heeds John’s advice. He does go back to the clubs for a pull, recklessness vibrating within him. This time he isn’t so picky in his taste. A lass with sandy hair and pearlescent eyes is willing to show him a good time, so he takes her back to the cinema. He thinks about John’s views on a girl’s self-worth and how all of it had been a load of shite. Because if this one knew the way she’s being used as little more than a weapon, she’d drop him in an instant.

They fall into bed as sloppily and obnoxiously as John has many a night before. Paul kisses down her body, tattooing glib words of praise into her skin. He eats her out with a reverence that never translates beyond physical; he’s merciless and thrills at the shape of another’s putty heart in his hands. But no matter how snugly his head is nestled between her thighs, it isn’t enough to muffle the rage that erupts from John.

He wrecks their wardrobe and ruins the girl’s clothes with a pair of scissors and hurls insults. She wails in confusion, begging him to stop. Mouth glistening as he sprawls on the sheets, Paul feels helpless to it all. All the while, George writes it off as the drink and escorts her out with his jacket around her trembling shoulders like an oversized snakeskin.

With everyone out of the room, Paul sits there, surrounded by the destruction of their night. One that he distantly recalls being John’s twentieth birthday. Wardrobes ruined and dresses shredded and egos bruised. His temples throb like the devil dances behind his eyes. 

_ Why do they all look like me?!  _ he cries out, or at least thinks he does. But his head hits the mattress before he can determine if the words ever made it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts <3
> 
> on a whim I decided to make a small playlist for this fic just from songs that inspire me as I write. I'll link it for anyone interested:
> 
> [Pretty Boys playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/29lD84XKGUPkQ1MNHGhP45?si=OTaKxcQhQJ2kLXInrnCDAg)
> 
> [@unchaineddaisychain](https//:unchaineddaisychain.tumblr.com) on tumblr

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading
> 
> [tumblr](https://unchaineddaisychain.tumblr.com)


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